


Playing Doctor

by Pookaseraph



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, M/M, Medical Professionals, Mild Gore, Minor Character Death, Pre-Slash, Sleeping Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-20
Updated: 2013-09-20
Packaged: 2017-12-27 02:40:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/973319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pookaseraph/pseuds/Pookaseraph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermann is completely through with Newton. <i>Doctor</i> Geiszler seems to be under the mistaken impression that it is a good idea to play at being an actual medical professional, and the rest of the Shatterdome staff seems inclined to go along!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Playing Doctor

**Author's Note:**

> http://pacificrimkink.livejournal.com/2747.html?thread=3595963#t3595963
> 
> Based on this prompt.

Hermann not been particularly impressed with Doctor Newton 'call me Newt' Geiszler from the moment they had met. This was largely due to the fact he did not care for the softer sciences, and certainly not anyone who thought that dissections and remains of some sort of extraterrestrial monster was 'awesome, Dude'. Where he really started to grate, however, was his cavalier attitude towards dispensing medical advice around the lab as though he was in any way qualified to do so.

It was even worse when some of the staff started using Newton as some sort of... out patient clinic.

That trend started with Tendo... somehow it always started with Tendo, usually an STD test - not that Hermann was trying to listen, but Tendo's voice wasn't exactly quiet - and Tendo was apparently incapable of keeping his member encased in latex on a regular basis.

Medical actually sourced a huge section of Newton's lab as the 'pathology area' and the laboratory technicians actually allowed Newton to oversee the day's run logs and control values and temp-tracking as though he was in any way qualified to do anything other than freeze and thaw silicate remains and _he was a goddamn biologist_ , one who specialized in _aliens_ , and yet when he grunted something that sounded like 'mmm, hematocrit' people acted as though he had said something remarkably profound.

It drove Hermann to distraction.

*

Ranger Pentecost brought Mako - the girl with the red shoe - to Newton for a check up after the man's fight with Onibaba. Hermann tried to pretend it was because Newton was an otaku and spoke a ridiculous amount of Japanese, but Pentecost seemed remarkably calm about the whole thing. Newton worked his way through several checks - her neck, her eyes, all over - talking to her in an unending stream of words that Hermann couldn't understand while Hermann observed the proceedings with a distant eye.

"He has surprisingly good bedside manner," Pentecost said.

Hermann fought down the urge to shout: _and no medical degree_ , but only barely.

Yes, Newton was one of the few people on the base who spoke fluent Japanese, but that should have meant he was assisting a proper doctor, not acting as though he could actually perform an exam.

He left Mako with a ruffle of her hair and a tissue, before he came up to Pentecost and got as in the man's face as such a small man could such a large man. "You and Sevier, MRIs, ASAP. Don't think I won't pull rank."

As though the man had any rank to pull...

And yet, Sevier left the service entirely, put on retirement, and Pentecost was moved to command track, and as far as Hermann knew, not even Tendo knew why.

*

Hermann was _absolutely certain_ that Newton stabbing most of the lab with flu vaccinations every year was not well-advised.

*

"Doc Geiszler got me some stuff for it, cleared right up."

*

"You know, dizziness, light-headed, sort of... something in the ear?" The tech made a few hand gestures that apparently Newton could interpret while he was up to his armpits in kaiju guts.

"I'll draw some blood in a minute," Newton said.

 _And then he actually did_.

*

Chuck Hansen came begging Newton for 'a second opinion' about an arm fracture as though his opinion would carry any weight.

Hermann didn't have to protest, because Newton agreed with the original doctor's assessment that Chuck could not return to active duty for five weeks at least, but Newton did send him away with several suggestions for physical therapy that he could do.

*

"If you even think of suggesting physical therapy exercises I will shove this cane so far up your ass," Hermann said, trying to decide if he was annoyed or relieved that Newton hadn't said anything about the addition of the cane that he had used all day.

Newton held his hands up in surrender - covered in entrails, as usual - and turned back to his carcass. 

A small brochure about better cane use form was tucked under his keyboard a day later, and Hermann ignored it for four days before he finally admitted that the suggestions had merit.

*

Where Hermann finally drew the line was when there was a kaiju attack in Lima, when they were there, and as soon as the post-attack triage tents were up, Newton grabbed a canister of the Blue counter-agent, and rather than pass it to one of the technicians, he started to head out towards the nearest tent.

"Where on Earth do you think you are going?" Hermann asked.

"To... help?" Newton said, sounding confused. "There are thousands of casualties and they need to be triaged and treated for Blue exposure."

"Do you really feel that much of a need to interject yourself?" Hermann asked, finding himself hurrying along after Newton as the man slung a pair of duffel bags over his shoulder.

"What?" Newton asked.

"Don't you think it's more appropriate if a real doctor contribute?"

"Hermann... I _am_ a doctor."

"For God's sake, Newton. Where did you attend medical school?" The truth was, Newton was reckless, but Hermann was truly beginning to worry the man would hurt someone if he continued to act as though some sort of doctorate in biology in any way prepared him to--

"Harvard? Dude, I did an MD/PhD program. I mean, yeah, I mostly specialize in pathology now but it's not like I don't know how to diagnose things." Newt huffed, and re-shouldered the bags. "I need to go. A lot of people are hurt."

Hermann let him go, staring after Newton's retreating form, entirely confused. A few minutes later, he found himself hustling after Newton, finding him at one of the triage stations, a tech to his right carefully inoculating a stream of civilians well enough to walk while Newton shrugged into a coat.

"I--" He had no idea why he was here, and a moment later he realized he was wasting precious seconds that Newton might be helping people. "Can I help?"

"Are you immunocompromised?" Newton asked, no preamble.

"Ah..." Doctor, Newton was a doctor. "Yes. Yes I am."

"James, if you could?"

With very little warning, he found his sleeve being rolled up, his arm swabbed, and a stab of the Blue inoculation being injected into his upper arm. Newton then pulled out some sort of badge, pinned it to Hermann's jacket, put a mask over his face, and handed over a small case. Newton then gave himself the same treatment. "Come on."

"Isn't the purpose of a triage tent..."

"To triage people who are well enough to walk. Keep up, Hermann."

Hermann thought that Newton might have been referring to his leg, but it was clear after a moment that Newton simply meant... well he'd never been a man to wave his degrees and accomplishments around the lab - as attested to by the fact that he'd worked with Hermann for three years and Hermann hadn't even known he had a proper medical degree - but he was making it clear, now, that he was the expert and Hermann was here as the inexpert assistant.

The pair of them picked their way through the rubble of Lima, Newton stopping every now and again whenever he found a downed civilian incapable of getting up. He would get down on his knees, and would speak in broken, halting Spanish to comfort whoever he had found, or their family. Hermann quickly found himself becoming an expert in the preparing of Blue inoculations, handing them off to Newton wordlessly while he injected whichever patients hadn't been able to - or had been unwilling - to make the trip to one of the triage stations.

Hermann was no expert, he could admit at much, but he watched Newton carefully diagnose broken bones, likely internal injuries, what seemed to be the beginnings of a heart attack, and Hermann carefully reported them to the local paramedics whose job it was to evacuate them to local hospitals for further treatment.

He also found himself marking the locations of dead bodies on the maps, to be evacuated by people who no longer concerned themselves with the living.

Newton, in spite of the surrounding carnage, seemed untouched, he worked his way from patient to patient, and Hermann, in spite of his own fatigue, continued his way through, carrying Newton's case, preparing injections under Newton's watchful - and patient - eye, and continued to be in awe of the easy way Newton's had with the people there.

Until Lucia.

There was a young girl, a few years younger than them, maybe twenty five or so, and Newt came over to where she was pinned under rubble, whimpering for help as four men tried to pull away the pieces of building that held her down.

"Doctor," Newton said, hand on his own chest. "Doctor." They let him push passed, and Newt was down next to her.

Hermann set down his case, carefully preparing more inoculations, and when he tried to pass it over to Newton, he just shook his head, before he tilted it, indicating the men who had been trying to help her.

Hermann understood enough Italian to follow the basics of the Spanish, there were no technical words, no descriptions of the wounds, no talking of her symptoms. Instead, Newton asked her her name - Lucia - where she was from, about her family, what she was doing in Lima, what she did for a living...

She knew. Hermann could tell she knew from the way Newton was talking to her, but she talked. She mentioned a sister, a nephew, how she wanted to teach him football. Newton held her under her neck, his other hand was pressed against some gaping wound that might have been preserving her life for a few more heartbeats.

It took perhaps two minutes. 

Newton checked her pulse. Hermann watched his hands, but they did not shake, and then he pulled away, stood, took two deep breaths, and then started to walk away.

"Lo siento," he told the assembled men, and they hung their heads in turn. "Come on, Hermann," Newton said, and continued away.

There were several more deaths, none so personal, none so intimate and close, but ones where Newton scrambled to try to help, to stop bleeding or to stitch up wounds, and Hermann watched those with a silent, down-turned frown. They didn't return to the Shatterdome for almost twenty hours.

"Do you need something to help you sleep?" Newton asked, reclaiming his case from Hermann outside of Hermann's room.

"I'll be fine, Newton, thank you."

By the time he thought to reciprocate the question, Newton had already shut his door.

*

Hermann woke over eleven hours later, and when he got to his office, Newton was already there, on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. He didn't look as though he had slept at all.

He could have turned away and ignored it, but he found himself pulling one of the rolling chairs over so that it was by Newton's head. Hermann sat.

"I can't believe you didn't know I was a doctor," Newton said.

"In my defense, you were here doing astrobiological research. Most people who call themselves 'doctor' here are not trained in medicine in any way." Hermann couldn't help the little smile, though.

"I like working with you because you don't ask me to diagnose your cough."

Hermann thought of the stream of individuals who made it their mission to pester Newton about every ailment under the sun. "I still won't."

He won a smile in response.

"Did you sleep?"

"Tomorrow," Newton answered, as though sleep was the sort of thing you needed only every few days. "I... there's a reason I'm a pathologist, even though I'm great with patients."

Newton was very keyed up. Hermann could recognize the signs, the jitters, the nerves and bubbling energy, but he was also _so_ wound up that any further attempt at work would no doubt end with him injured himself or ruining a specimen. Newton was not the most sedate of people, but he was fairly self aware.

"Ah... do _you_ need something to sleep?" Hermann asked.

"Nah. I-- anything I take knocks me on my ass for days. When I get like this it's two days, tops." Newton jiggled one of his legs, and then seemed to realize what he was doing and stretched it out, urging it to stop.

"Tea?"

Newton chuckled, and slung a hand over his eyes. "Really what I need is... music."

Hermann gritted his teeth, he knew what Newton considered to be 'music' and it was nothing that Hermann enjoyed. "Why aren't you partaking, then?"

"The acoustics in my room are all wrong, and you complain to admin when I play music in the lab," Newt answered, very reasonably.

"And if just this once I made an exception?"

Newton was on his feet in a second, and pulling out an actual record player, before he pulled out an LP and placed it, set the needle, and then no doubt cranked the volume up to full. "The best sound in the lab is right on that couch."

After a few pops - old speakers - something loud and orchestral came up before Hermann was suddenly engulfed in _opera_ of all things, Carmen. Hermann didn't think he'd heard this performance before.

There were obviously more LPs, but Newton had put the last one on, and he had his eyes closed, breathing calm, by the end.

"I could probably use the tea, too..."

Hermann took a few minutes to get Newton a cup, and he sipped it slowly, eyes still shut, but Hermann could see them flick back and forth behind his lids.

"Thanks."

"You are... surprisingly competent at your craft."

The corner of Newton's mouth teased upward. "I don't think you've ever complimented me that much."

Newton's hair had fallen down over his face - just a natural consequence of the hair gel he used losing some of its strength - and Hermann reached out, brushing it out of Newton's face. "Well, your scientific reasoning is uniformly faulty, but your medical practice must be sufficient if you find yourself so many patients."

"There's my Hermann," Newton said, chuckling. "I wouldn't know what to do if you weren't insulting me at least a little bit, although I think I might have caught a fallacy in there."

" _Argumentum ad populum_ ," Hermann answered, without even having to think about it. He very likely should stop brushing his hand against Newton's hair, but he convinced himself not to stop because Newton was smiling even with his eyes closed.

He did stop, two or three minutes later, and would have pulled away but for the sad, pleading little noise from Newton and he returned his hand just to scratch lightly at Newton's temples. "You can just do that forever."

'Forever' was another four or five minutes, which was how long it took from Newton to go from breathing gently to snoring softly. Hermann removed his hand, and stood, stretching his own legs and going back to his own work.

If Hermann took advantage of the opportunity to thumb through and find the rest of the recording, and after adjusting the volume heavily, he actually enjoyed the full length of the opera, and Newton seemed to enjoy it as well, even if he snorted in some parts. He was... endearing.

*

The outpatient visits resumed two days later, although Hermann could tell that Newton had not fully recovered.

"Hey, Doc--"

"I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Choi, but I have a great deal of work today," Hermann answered, before he could go on about whatever pustule had sprouted on who knew what orifice and completely ruin Hermann's lunch. "You will have to make an appointment with Dr. Geiszler."

Newton snorted somewhere most of the way through a dissection. "Sorry, Tendo, I'm just going to start doing my clinic hours over in the clinic."

"You have clinic hours?" Hermann asked, after Tendo had left. "I was being facetious."

"I'm supposed to do a twelve hour shift every other Friday, and consult on most infections - bacterial, viral, and fungal - but in practice I do more than twelve a bi-week here so Weiss doesn't make me do my clinic hours."

"How magnanimous of him," Hermann answered. "But now that I am aware of the fact that you are a doctor, not an amateur who swallowed an anatomy textbook one weekend several years ago, you will behave like a professional and not conduct your examinations and tests here, in my lab."

"I'll just blame you, it'll be great," Newton returned to his own dissections. "I know I said I liked that you didn't bother me for medical advice, but... if you ever need--"

"I will be certain to see Dr. Weiss for all of my medical needs, thank you, Dr. Geiszler."

That was the end of it.

*

Very little changed between them. The only real addition was that Hermann now glowered at people who tried to sneak in visits to see Newton for purposes related to the medical rather than the scientific, and informed them that they would need to make an appointment.

The two of them both moved to Los Angeles, not really intentionally, but that was where the K-Science programs were now. Newton ended up taking a clinic day, Hermann glowered at people who tried to cut their wait times by visiting the labs.

When a kaiju slipped passed the defenses of the LA team, Newton was out in the field, Hermann a few paces behind him, again for hours, again Hermann saw more death in a day than he had in the last year, and this time he was, if not better prepared, at least prepared for the drop that came after too much adrenaline and not enough sleep.

"Need anything?" Newton asked, intentionally or otherwise mimicking the conversation of months ago.

"Ahh... no," Hermann said. He had an acceptable time of it last time, but this time, before Newton can flee, he cleared his throat. "Do you need anything?"

Newton had an expressive face, he couldn't help it, and sometimes Hermann took advantage of that, but in that moment, Newton looked very lost, and confused, and nothing like his almost-30 years. "No, no, Hermann I'm fine."

Hermann ignored the protest, and turned Newton back towards his room, where he sat Newton down on his bed and set to work on some tea. "I am somehow unsurprised that you are a doctor and yet completely incapable of taking care of yourself."

He received no argument in return, just Newton pulling an iPod or something similar and pressing play, only to have the room filled with a tinny piece from a musical that Hermann was unfamiliar with.

"You seem to enjoy... mezzos?" Hermann asked, identifying the range even if he wasn't much of an opera and musical aficionado.

"My mother," Newton explained, confusing Hermann even more, but he didn't protest, just returned to the man's side with a cup of tea and served as a stand for the iPod to rest on.

Less than ten minutes later, Newton was asleep on Hermann's shoulder, tea in danger of splashing everywhere.

Hermann took the tea, shut down the iPod, and helped ease Newton down onto his side. He was so vulnerable like that, eyes closed, hair already starting to clump, and Hermann didn't resist the urge to run his fingers along the back of his neck. He enjoyed the moment of thinking that the happy little sigh Newton made was for him, and not the general comfort of the touch.

After far too long - a few minutes, really - he admitted that he needed to stop this, and took his cane, ready to stand and make his way back to his own room.

Newton reached out, hand missing Hermann completely, but the intent was obvious.

Hermann waited.

"Stay?"

Hermann stayed, unsure, for several moments, before he reached out and put his hand back against Newton's neck. He felt the man relax under his touch, and gave into the urge to stay.

He could figure out what it meant in the morning, right then, Newton needed someone to care for him.


End file.
